


From Sunup to Sundown

by illyriantremors



Category: A Court of Thorns and Roses Series - Sarah J. Maas
Genre: ACOMAF UA, Angst, Cabin, F/M, NSFW, Smut, Starfall, Universe Alternate, acomaf, mate bond
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-23
Updated: 2016-10-23
Packaged: 2018-08-24 05:19:44
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,091
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8358841
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/illyriantremors/pseuds/illyriantremors
Summary: Feyre has been dancing the night away at Starfall when morning comes and it's time to go home and suddenly, parting from Rhys seems more unbearable than it ever has before. Saying goodnight at the door, Feyre realizes the bargain they made Under the Mountain might just be a heck of a lot more than she realized.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [TheBookishSoul](https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheBookishSoul/gifts).



> This is for feysand17 who requested: "Would you write a smutty fic about where Feyre knows and accepts the bond at Starfall and Rhys takes her to the cabin I just thought about this AU how it would play out."
> 
> I wish this one had turned out better overall, though I don’t hate it or anything. I just don’t think I write Feyre very well, but it felt wrong to make this a Rhys POV. And it’s hard to boil down 15-20 chapters of Feyre’s emotional journey into one fic, but this fic would have been catastrophically long had I teased it out to match what Sarah gave us, so... this overly wordy OOC monstrosity is what I’m left with. Hopefully there’s something good in it and if not, at least there’s smut!

“Feyre,” Rhys whispered. He said my name one more time and I blinked my eyes open. I hadn’t even realized I’d closed them. Rhys was looking down at me softly, our bodies still swaying faintly even though the music had stopped, though I didn’t know when it had.

“Did I...?”

“Only a little.” He lifted me into his arms, cradling me against his chest before taking off into the sky. My first Starfall was over.

We flew back to the townhouse, wind whipping against us, but it was warm against Rhys’s chest. I could feel his skin through the shirt. It felt oddly pleasant.

But what struck me as even odder was the feeling that I didn’t want it to go away when he set me down. I thought my skin might crack open and bleed from the loss of contact.

As we walked through the townhouse towards my room leaving Velaris’s pale pink skies behind us, I remembered another long night that had dragged on until the early hues of morning shone, one that had ended with stolen kisses and the first bright streaks of new love.

Why was I thinking about that night now?

My stomach recoiled at the word. _Love_. I didn’t love Rhysand. I couldn’t. He was... my mind clouded with a dizzyness that couldn’t come up with anything negative to say anymore. A few months ago I would have had every insult in the world to hurl at him and now...

Rhys squeezed my hand. I checked my mental shields hoping they were still intact in my sleepy state, that he hadn’t heard me, but everything seemed fine.

Besides, if I dared to love Rhysand, who was to say it wouldn’t go the way things had with Tamlin. I still hadn’t even properly broken things with Tamlin. The letter was one thing, but I knew deep down it wouldn’t be enough for him. Could I really find it in me to betray him for Rhys? The fact that I was even asking the question implied I _wanted_ to betray him for Rhys and that thought terrified me.

“Feyre?”

We’d stopped outside my room and Rhys was looking at me with quiet concern while I looked back at him wondering how this man had become so much to me in the past two months, more than I dared admit.

“I’m sorry,” I said realizing we must have been standing there for an awkward space while my mind did backflips. “I was just thinking.”

Rhys nodded. He seemed to debate whether or not to say something. Part of me was petrified he would while another part of me was even more terrified he wouldn’t. Finally, he simply lifted the hand he’d been holding, turning it over in his palm to kiss the back of it, and bid me a tender, “Goodnight, Feyre darling.”

It was the first time he’d called me that without some kind of snark behind it. Starfall washed over me before he parted. All the little moments from the dust I’d drawn around on his hands to the kiss he’d placed on my cheek, the dancing, the drinks, the lights, but most of all it was him.

_Rhysand_.

Everything was him.

He’d taken me on that balcony and I’d felt peace for the first time in my life. My world was on the right axis. He was the gravity holding me down so I didn’t fall to pieces. He was spinning through song after song, his hands finding me each and every time so I didn’t topple over and when the night had been too much, he offered me his shoulder to lean on and rest.

And it was so wonderfully nice. All of it. I’d never let myself dare imagine that I could have a home with Rhys, but tonight proved that I could. One that was warm and happy. And I wanted it so badly, more than I had known these past two months outside the layers of flirtation and fighting we danced between.

Our hands started to drop as Rhys let go so he could retreat to his own room. I was mildly surprised thinking surely he’d want to stay after the night we’d just had, the one where I hadn’t let go of him for hours, had nearly fallen asleep in his arms. And I was heartbreakingly disappointed by it, more than I should have been.

Maybe he’d heard me thinking about Tamlin after all. Maybe that was why. Why did I even think about Tamlin in the first place? He’d told me to stop comparing them after that scene in the Court of Nightmares and still I hadn’t and I was a fool for doing so. Rhys and Tamlin were _nothing_ alike. The way Rhys held my hand and didn’t let go - a sure and constant stable in my life - was proof enough of their difference.

Tamlin had let me go at every turn, even in the beginning. But Rhys. He fought to stay as close to me as he could. So why was he leaving now?

His fingers lingered for an extra second and then our hands split and Rhys was walking away from me, ending the night. My fingertips burned at the loss of the touch, like a connection between us was being severed.

I groped the air willing that link back like I could pull him to me, but he was physically out of reach. But I needed _something_. My body was starved, desperate to get him back for that touch, the indulgent feline smiles, the wit, the wings, everything I loved - _Rhysand!_

I gave a startled cry.

Rhys stopped dead in his tracks and I knew he’d felt it. I may not have been able to reach him with my hand anymore, but the second I dared allow myself the room to admit I loved him, it was like my soul had reached for him, going taut with the same connection, the same link I had craved, only stronger and deeper as the tides at sea.

Slowly, Rhys turned around to look at me. My hand was still reaching for him midair. And I knew. I felt it churning deep inside of me explaining the extremity of my disappointment when he’d walked away, the euphoria of when he’d touched me on the balcony while the stars flew a thousand miles above us.

_Mate._

I could see Rhys calculating. He had probably known. Of course he would have and I was furious for it. “Feyre?” he asked hesitantly all his confidence zapped out of him. I’d rarely seen him look so gutted, not even when we’d fought just a few days ago. Then he’d only flinched, but now he looked like the earth had fallen out from beneath him and left him without any wings to fly away with.

A pain stung my eyes. I couldn’t be angry. Maybe I could, but if he could just tell me, just explain...

_“Rhys...”_ My voice came out thick and raw. He came right to me and I let him, let him encircle me in his arms like we were still dancing. Anything just to touch him again. “How long?”

“A while.”

He looked as fragile as I felt.

“Will you tell me? Will you tell me everything?”

Because I needed to know. I needed to know what this was and how deep it ran between us before I made any decisions. A mate bond would change the course of my immortal life forever.

“Not here.” He tore his violet eyes away from me to think and even that left a scar on my soul. I suddenly had a feeling I already knew where my choice would end up. “Do you trust me?”

It wasn’t even a real question in my mind. I didn’t need to think back on the weeks spent with him building up the connection between us before I blurted out my answer. “Undeniably.”

A tiny sigh of relief escaped him. “Hold on.”

We winnowed becoming a violent blur of skin and emotion across the wind and skies, landing in a forested mountainside. The thick scent of pinewood and sap filled and tickled my nose.

“Where are we?”

“The Illyrian Steppes,” Rhys said. “This is where I trained with Cassian and Azriel for years as kid learning to fight and fly. This is where I mostly grew up.”

I looked around, but the clearing we’d landed in was mostly deserted, though there were subtle traces lingering about that told me it was most definitely not uninhabited.

“It doesn’t looked like a camp.”

“We’re just a hair outside the real camps and be glad of it. You won’t want to meet Lord Devlon and his thugs any sooner than you have to. But if I winnow us here, it’s close enough for us to fly on and anyone still tracking my magic won’t dare to come after us with the threat of thousands of Illyrians around who bow to my command.”

“Fly on where exactly?”

“You’ll see.”

Rhys picked me up properly. He seemed uncomfortable being so near his old home. It was probably equal parts torture and freedom to have lived here for so long. But there was also a small peace settling over him as he held me, his arms strong and sure around me.

I could feel it, the bond. It thrummed to life between us guiding us both out of our anxiety and toward each other. The second our skin met again, the pain washed out of us both.

Part of me felt like such a fool for not spotting it sooner. I’d always noticed an energy being around Rhysand that didn’t exist with anyone else, but always I had blamed it on his High Lord’s powers or the fact that he could be such an irksome prick to me in particular.

Now that I took care to pay attention to the cord binding us together, it felt like my world was shifting and I could suddenly see everything as though through a new filter and Rhysand was the only thing standing upright. Was this how he had felt the entire time I’d been in the Night Court? Yet another cruel act of misery to feel guilty for, I supposed.

We took off into the sky and the whole of Illyrian territory stretched before me. This high up, the trees outnumbered the stars painting earth’s own galaxy beneath the mountains that towered around us. Snow capped the peaks and glass mirrors could be seen in valleys here and there lying undisturbed below their icy surface.

“You should sleep,” Rhys said. “We have a bit of a journey ahead of us.”

“What about you?”

Rhys smirked. The open air at his back seemed to lighten some of the burdens he carried. “I’ve been planning for this day for a long time, Feyre. The day I make you mine, assuming you want me to by the time I’m through explaining everything. Trust me when I say that I’ll be fine.”

I shivered, my body burrowing into his side to hide the flush creeping over my face at his implications. How long was long, exactly?

I didn’t think I could sleep, not with so much beauty to look at in the land nor when a million different thoughts continued to plague my mind about what was happening or about to come.

But then Rhys’s chest was warm again and his hand started pressing soothing caresses along my back, as much as he could without losing his grip on me, and even so high up in the sky I could still smell him, that sweet mixture of sea and citrus. The aroma surrounded me, rocking me to sleep along with a steady rhythm in my ears beating in time to my heart.

_Mate. Mate. Mate._

And with that last thought in mind, I dozed off against him wondering how deep that touch might run when I woke up.

 

* * *

 

The steep change in altitude as Rhys flew us down was what woke me. We settled in a grassy clearing surrounded my trees, but the cabin standing before us was what drew my attention.

Rhys set me on my feet, but didn’t touch me after that. He maintained a careful distance as we walked toward the cabin giving us both room to breathe and exist.

“We used to come here as kids,” he said. “Me and Cassian and Azriel. Sometimes Mor too whenever we could get her away. My mother always got so mad when I came home reeking of alcohol.” The nervous laugh as he ran his hand through his hair was short lived when he opened the door for me. I stepped inside and found a warm living room that extended into a huge kitchen just past a very long, ornately carved wooden dining table. There were other rooms beyond that I couldn’t yet see and naturally everything seemed magically built to accommodate wings.

I was uncomfortably aware that the other rooms tucked away were likely bedrooms, bedrooms where he and I might...

_Mate._

I flushed with heat. Rhys shifted a few feet away from me and it was a comfort that he likely felt as awkward and as nervous as I did.

“What now?” I asked.

“Whatever you want, Feyre.” Rhys sat on the couch giving me space to decide. It was _my_ choice. He seemed to want that to be clear.

I sat down on a chair opposite him and kept my hands clasped tightly in my lap. “I don’t know how this works. You’ll have to explain it to me. I don’t know what happens when two people, eh, mate.”

“It doesn’t have to happen if you don’t want it to,” and he was decidedly serious. If I said no, that would be the end of it and life would go on as it had. “Yes, there are bedrooms here and yes, people who mate normally take wild advantage of that fact. But I brought you here because it’s far away from the others and I don’t want that pressure looming over you when I explain. That is, if you’ll still let me.”

“Well I didn’t fly all this way just to go home disappointed, did I?”

Rhys closed his eyes with a soft smile. There was comfort in the familiarity of our snaps. I felt some tension drain off him across the bond.

The bond. Cauldron, there was a bond, not a bargain. Had the bargain ever really even been a thing? My mind wandered over all the moments we’d lived through picking up old details with fresh eyes and suddenly, everything was starting to make perfect sense in this new context.

“Tell me everything,” I said. “From the beginning. I need to know.”

“Okay.”

And so Rhys told me everything. He told me about the first war, how he’d nearly been in Amarantha’s clutches and tortured to the point of death before his father’s armies saved him. He told me about the end of the war, his fallout with Tamlin, and the subsequent events that led to the curse Under the Mountain. He told me about becoming her whore to save his court, staying locked up away from his friends and his life for fifty years while he played a cruel role he hated just to survive. He told me how in all of this he dreamt of me, the girl in the snow with blood on her hands and nightmares in her dreams.

The story unraveled from there. The mate bond saving me when Amarantha snapped my neck, Rhysand forcing the other High Lords to remake me, and then watching Tamlin rip me away from him back to the Spring Court and having to watch me nearly fall apart and die anyway for the next three months before he found me.

Rhys told me everything with solemn clarity. But there were cracks in his voice as he spoke that unpacked a raw hollow center in him where he was still aching, still hurting. Tears spilled from his eyes as he talked about my death and I couldn’t help but flashback to that horrible moment where Amarantha had beaten him to within an inch of his life and his screams filled my ears with just one word: _Feyre_.

I should have known. If I had been paying any attention to Rhys to see past my hatred of him, maybe I could have seen it. He had known since the night he’d spotted me on Fire Night. I had been around him for months now and hadn’t spotted a thing.

Shame gutted me. How could I have not realized who this perfect beautiful person across from me was? It made the gap between us unbearable. I’d lived long enough with that void, I could stand it no more.

I sprang out of my seat and crossed over to Rhys, placing myself over him so that I straddled his lap. He’d stopped talking, but the tears were still coming and so I kissed them away one by one, not unlike the way he’d taken away my own in that prison cell so long ago now.

“I love you,” I said, choking on a sob of my own. Rhys’s head fell against my shoulder burying itself in my dress. “I love you. I know that now. I’m only sorry it took me so long to find you. I’m broken and I’m healing and it’s made me lost in a fog, but I see you now. I see you _so_ clearly.”

I kissed the side of his head through the soft blue-black tendrils of hair curling at his ear, and dragged his chin up to meet my eyes. We stared at each other for a moment in quiet contemplation. Long, loving caresses went down the bond in either direction and it wasn’t long before a smile cracked my face through the tears.

“So how do we... what happens now?”

“Again, that’s up to you. If you want to become my mate-”

“Oh I want to.”

Rhysand stilled, looking up at me with wild delight. I’d never actually said the words aloud and it thrilled him to hear it, I could tell.

“Well, technically to make it official among the fae, we would go to a priestess - a _good_ priestess, nothing like Ianthe - and have the bond consecrated. But mate bonds are the oldest and most sacred of fae rites. All you really have to do to accept is make me food.”

“Make you _food?”_ I scoffed at him, but couldn’t help tugging his body a little closer to mine. “That sounds ridiculous.”

“It is,” he admitted. “It hearkens back to our more primal nature. We’re still mates either way, Feyre. It’s just a silly tradition that states it more formally. Some mates hold big feasts with the entire city. Other toss a few cookies at each other and call it a night. Either way, I don’t expect anything from you.”

I glanced nervously at the kitchen. “But I can’t cook.”

Rhys took my hands and kissed them. “I’ll help you.”

He picked me up, my legs wrapping around his waist to hold on in a position I’d never been in with him before, but one I was likely going to be much more familiar with by the day’s end. It sent a wave of heat flushing over me.

“Are you sure the food is necessary?” I asked as he set me down on one of the kitchen counters. “Right now I can think of a lot of other things I’d rather _eat_.”

Rhys growled low in his chest while I ran my fingers over him staring longingly at the buttons of his shirt. I’d never indulged openly in thinking about him this way and I was certainly sorry now I’d wasted so many opportunities to do so.

“The faster you cook, the sooner you can feast, darling,” he purred.

I popped down from the counter and together, we went to work.

The cabin seemed to perform like magic. Whenever I had need of a utensil, it sprang to life in front of me. Ingredients appeared on the shelves that hadn’t been there when I first went through them and halfway through cooking, the dining table adjacent the kitchen had come to life with a full table setting.

We settled on breakfast since technically we still hadn’t eaten it even if the afternoon was already soaking into evening. Rhys washed a bowl of berries in the sink while I rubbed butters and jams over the last few morsels of bread I had grilling.

It was difficult, but we maintained a careful distance while we worked, not wanting to accidentally give in too soon to the heat I could feel looming between us. When I had everything set, I finally touched him again and it was everything I could do not to let the bread burn and forgo the entire plan.

I shoved him into a seat, collected the food on a plate, and set it down in front of him, taking my own to the complete opposite end of the table where I could watch him. Rhys grabbed a piece of bread and without breaking eye contact, lifted it to his mouth and bit. He didn’t stop until every last bite was gone, though he occasionally paused to suggestively poke the bread into a side of jelly on his plate. I blushed furiously and kept eating.

And then my plate was empty and I had nothing else to do but to lay down my fork and look up to find Rhys watching me silently, a hungry look in his eyes.

He crooked his finger at me. “Come here,” he said with tight, practiced control, but I surprised him by shaking my head.

“I already claimed you,” I said nodding at his plate. “It’s your turn.”

Rhys paused long enough for a wicked grin to spike on his face before he picked his napkin off his lap and tossed it aside. But then rather than get up and walk over to me, his hand flew violently across the table in front him, sending his glass flying to hit the wall with a hard _smack!_ His plate followed going in the opposite direction before he stood and heaved his muscled mass onto the table where he crawled across it toward me, a lion coming after his mate.

Dishes were shoved aside in Rhysand’s wake. He snapped the armrests of my chair clean off to allow himself better access to pick me up, which he swiftly did. Scooped me clean up out of my chair so that we were on our knees atop the table facing each other.

And in answer to my challenge, Rhys looked at me full of sinful intent and growled, _“You’re mine.”_

He shirked me to him and my temperature went through the roof. I pressed my body as close to him as I could so that when his lips came over mine, I could feel every inch of him. “Say it again,” I demanded between his fervent lips begging at me.

“You’re mine.” Against me, I felt a hardness stiffen in his pants. I moaned and Rhys reacted immediately.

His hands undid the zipper at the back of my dress and took a moment to revel in the feel of my skin before coming around to shove it off and fully expose the top of me. It fell in a ribbon around my knees.

Rhys purred like a cat as he flipped me around, shoving dishes out of the way and laying me against the table. I undid the clasp on my bra and flung it off in whatever direction and found Rhys’s mouth coming down to bite over my breasts roughly. A pleasure unlike any I’d felt before curled through my skin at the contact and all I knew was I wanted _more, more, more._

_More of my mate.  
_

“You don’t know how long I’ve been waiting to do this,” Rhys said.

“You don’t know what I’ll do if you make me wait any longer to find out,” I spat back and he snarled, moving on instinct down my body with a touch that said he’d lived in my skin for a thousand years. He grabbed my underwear and in one great pull ripped it off of me in a shred of fabric.

“Rhys...” I gasped, not to stop him, but to spurn him on nervous as he laid down on his stomach below me, took my legs over his shoulders, and sunk his lips into the warm center between my legs.

I barked out a moan as he began licking me. My hand jerked and came down hard somewhere on the table, landing in a pool of butter or jelly or something, I had no idea anymore. All I knew was that his tongue felt like fire, burning me alive with the sensations it poured down the mold of me, casting me into a new creature made expressly for him by his own hands.

My hips started buckling on the table almost at once. Rhys kept his hands on them to keep them locked in place, but still I fidgeted. My legs he allowed to move freely and move they did, trembling across his back with a shaking he unwound in me.

Every now and then, I’d touch his wings by mistake and he’d groan, his tongue riding into me a little harder and I decided I would be making many more mistakes by the end of this if it got that kind of reaction.

My fingers fisted in his hair pulling him harder against me, begging for him to make me come. His hands released their hold on my hips to entwine with my hands against him and the release allowed my hips to move with him, the rhythm breaking me in two.

And then I was falling. Falling so hard over him I couldn’t keep up. My hands fell to my sides as Rhys licked me through the high. I’d forgotten I had jelly on my hand until Rhys touched his head and came away with a smudge of it. He laughed, grabbed my jam inflicted hand and licked the rest of it off, sucking up and down my thin fingers.

I almost came again just watching him.

I flew at his chest, his shirt seeming unbearable to me as I yearned for skin to skin contact. He leaned back, more than happy to see it go, and together we got it off around the wings without magic. He scooted back so he could stand off the table and remove his pants. While he unbuckled them at the waist, I sat back on my elbows admiring the view of his chiseled chest, his wings tucked tightly behind him. And then his pants dropped.

Cassian was wrong. This wasn’t a man out of shape. This was a god ready for war.

He grabbed my ankles and yanked so that I came sliding down the table to meet him. We were at just the right angle and I was wet from where he’d drank from me, that we could have easily connected there, but Rhys picked me up and carried to me to the bedroom.

I clawed at him through the doorway. I didn’t want the bed. I wanted him pressed against me like he had been on the table, but this time with his face level with my own and our cores interlocked.

Wicked amusement lit a fire across the bond.

_What do you want?_ Rhys asked silently. _Tell your mate what you want_.

_The wall._ I replied and even though it was said inaudibly, I didn’t recognize the rasping sultriness flooding out of me, I was so sickeningly drunk on him. _Just fuck me against the wall._

And just as I had asked, Rhys spun me on the spot and slammed me against the nearest wall. I shimmied on him so I could hook one leg around his waist, but the other I opened wide to the side to invite him in.

That did it.

Rhys slid the hard length of himself slowly into me and it felt like eternity boiled down to that single moment forever frozen in time.

“I love you,” I said, which caused Rhys to pull back out before thrusting mercifully back in to me. I repeated it over and over as my High Lord - my _mate_ \- my equal continued to pulse against me and we danced together in unison. And that’s when I felt it clearly for the first time, this sort of cord tethering us together. I could not only feel it, but I could see it, almost even physically grab hold of it, taste it, hear it. All of my senses came alive with my mate filling me, claiming me to be his forever.

We were everywhere all at once. We were the stars that burned through the sky and the creatures that swam deep in the ocean, a never ending expanse of earth and sun and all the elements combined into one single perfect being. We smelled of each other, tasted of each other, blended until there was no more separation. I never wanted there to be any ever again.

Rhys ran his nose along my neck, the rumble returning to his throat as he enjoyed how our scents unified. _“Rhys,”_ I gasped as he kissed against my skin just below my ear where electricity sparked between us. He pulled back to look at me, our brows touching. And as he cradled me close, he thrust up deeply into me and I shattered around him in glorious ecstasy all over again.

The panting pouring out of me sent him into a renewed frenzy. I wrapped my arms around him and brushed against his wings - the wings he would only have out for me alone - and Rhys came filling me with himself and the mountains around us with a roar so deep and fierce, the world shook.

“You’re mine,” I whispered in the quiet pants as our bodies shook against each other. “You’re mine now always always.”

“Feyre,” Rhys said, his hands finding my face where he could stroke my cheeks. “My salvation.”

I smiled and allowed him to carry me to the bed where I kissed him deeply and spent the remainder of the evening finding new ways to touch him.

My Mate.

xx


End file.
